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Gun Bills On Life Support In Oregon Legislature

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Flickr, Robert Nelson

The future of a set of bills to create stricter gun laws is in doubt in the Oregon legislature. The most controversial measure would require criminal background checks for all gun sales. Another would allow school districts to ban guns from school grounds.

But after some initial momentum, the bills are heading back to committee.

There has been support for these ideas in the Oregon legislature. In fact, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved these measures and sent them out to the Senate floor. However, it looks like at this point there wasn’t enough support to pass those measures on the Senate floor. That’s why they’ve been sent back to committee.

Senate President Peter Courtney said that he’s appointing a work group to try to come up with a compromise on these measures, but they’ll have to work quickly to find that compromise before the end of the session.

The bills have already been the subject of hours of public hearings and have prompted thousands of emails to lawmakers on the topic.